Christmas Tradition Takes Wing for Bird Counters

As they have every holiday season since 1900, the men and women of the Audubon Society take to the woods loaded for bird.

Pencil? Check.

Clipboard? Check.

Binoculars? Calculator? Sibley’s Guide to Birds? Check, check, check--all standard equipment in Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count, a beak-by-beak tally that draws on the skills of about 50,000 volunteers throughout the United States, with a smattering in Canada, Latin America and the Pacific Islands.

On this chilly December morning, five veteran birders tramp through Caballero Canyon, a sycamore-shaded enclave in the western San Fernando Valley. Foot soldiers in what Audubon describes as the world’s largest ongoing wildlife survey, volunteer counters head for about 1,900 areas across the country. Some bring decades of competitive birding to the task, while others are out only to enjoy a purposeful stroll. All are crazy about birds and are eager to come to their census.

A hearty woman wearing silver earrings with little birdhouses on them, Muriel Kotin leads the Caballero Canyon crew. Like other Audubon members, she readily admits that the count can’t be anything close to precise.

“We’ll underestimate for the most part, not seeing everything and not wanting to double-count the birds we’ve already counted,” she says. “But it’s a good way to get a picture of which species are doing well and which are declining. If we go from a thousand scrub jays one year to 50 the next, we’ll know something is going on.”

Before setting out, the group stands for a while at the edge of Reseda Boulevard, scanning the skies.

“Look!” someone cries. “Across the street! Two house finches!”

A few yards down the trail, another cry goes up.

“Look! Flopping around in the brush, right there above the ice plant! A junco!”

But as the birders wend their way into the frigid canyon, they are less sure of their sightings.

That raptor swooping over the meadow is a hawk for sure--but is it a Cooper’s hawk or a red-shouldered hawk?

The bird books fly open and deliberations of near-Talmudic intensity ensue. The focus is on the fleetingly viewed stripes of the bird’s neck.

“It looked Cooper-ish,” declares Allan Kotin, Muriel’s husband. “Definitely Cooper-ish.”

A land-use economist, he wears the kind of many-pocketed khaki vest favored by combat photographers. His binoculars dangle from his neck, and he hauls a lightweight tripod with a small telescope designed for birding.

‘When our kids went off to college 14 years ago, we started doing hikes,” he says. “One of them was a bird walk, and we got hooked--big-time.”

As mountain bikers and joggers huff by, the group ambles on, alert to cheeps and trills.

“Oh, Judy of the good ears,” Muriel Kotin asks a fellow birder: “Is that a flicker I hear?”

Check.

And those half-dozen pigeon-like creatures that take wing as the group rounds a bend: mourning doves or band-tailed doves?

Mourning, insists Muriel, a former computer consultant who leads nature walks at the Sepulveda Basin.

Band-tailed, counters her husband. Then, glancing at his Sibley’s, he decides maybe not. Perhaps a bit more mourning than band-tailed, he concludes, if one has to pick between the two.

“Identification by negotiation,” Muriel chuckles, adding six mourning doves to her mounting list. “I love it.”

By day’s end, the group has bagged 346 individuals from 35 species, including a roadrunner that Muriel nearly runs over as she motors from the Caballero Canyon trail head to another counting site. Water birds--hooded mergansers, green herons, buffleheads--are spotted on a pond outside the heated patio of a Mexican restaurant in Encino.

“Hardship bird-watching,” Muriel jokes.

For the record, yellow-rumped warblers--”butterbutts” to the birders--account for more than 20% of the day’s sightings.

On their own, such data might not count for much. But in the next couple of months, Audubon scientists will pluck telling trends out of reports from across the United States. Last year, counters spotted more than 54 million birds, and at least that many are expected again.

“The information from the Christmas Bird Counts has done nothing but rise in value,” says John Bianchi, a spokesman for the National Audubon Society. Steep drops in the tallies of bald eagles, peregrine falcons, osprey and cormorants sounded “an eloquent warning” about DDT in the 1970s, he says. In some areas, woodpeckers and warblers have been seen declining as subdivisions have sprung up.

In Los Angeles County, home to more than 400 bird species, counters this month failed to spot even one loggerhead shrike in the San Gabriel Valley area. It was the first time that has happened in at least 50 years--the consequence of vacant lots and dry, open, sandy areas being paved over, according to an Audubon official.

At the same time, hummingbirds appear to be going great guns throughout the region, thanks to the lush tropical foliage planted around homes and office parks.

In Caballero Canyon, the crew speaks of such megatrends but also watches in awe as a turkey vulture soars and an Anna’s hummingbird dips into the brush with a red glint. They gaze in silence as two acorn woodpeckers sit calmly on a branch, watching the bird-watchers watching them.

At one point, Muriel Kotin spots something that she can’t recognize hovering high above the canyon.

She squints into her binoculars: “Two balloons,” she announces. “One green, one white.”